Religion, health, exercise, and brreathing.

12/6/12: I believe my trying to become a "perfected yogi" for a number of years has improved my life a lot. "The perfected yogi is aware of every breath," a quote from I know not where.

I don't know what else a "perfected yogi" might be. My fantasy is that he's very happy, commits no sins, is helpful to many people, is or appears to be very wise, is close to a perfect physical specimen until age cuts him down. If the quote came from a book, probably the book went into detail about both the kind of person a perfected yogi is and how to become one. I am very happy with how I have fleshed out this one line.

I try to stay aware of every breath in a number of ways. One is simply counting them in one of the many ways breaths can counted. Another is to be aware of them with the only cues for awareness being those given by the breath itself: belly moving in and out, chest expanding and collapsing, shoulders rising and falling, feelings in the throat and nose, and many more that our senses and nerves send to all of us.

Another is the inging practice, which may be my own invention. This is to mentally say any word ending in ing in time with my breathing. Sometimes I do the verb while inhaling, the ing while exhaling. Others I do the complete ing word while inhaling and add a few more to make a short sentence about what I am doing and am aware of.

The inging practice helps me know what I'm doing. At times I think I don't know what I'm doing, but ing helps keep me aware of it. I believe most people know very little of what they are doing. They're too preoccupied with other things. I am sure I know a bit more of my physical actions than the vast majority.

Physical action is the only way we have any effect on what we call the outside world, what we perceive as being outside our skin. There's a slim, a very slim chance that the typing I'm doing at the moment might effect or affect someone.

Talking expelling words or perhaps just sounds from our mouth occasionally has an effect on others. Far more often it just has an effect on the person doing the talking. Probably the less a person says, the bigger the effect on others.

An example would be our "perfected yogi." In order to stay aware of his breath while talking, he might say words only while exhaling. Of course all of us do that but I have met people who seem to be able to keep talking continuously. Our yogi would pause, probably for a long quite slow inhalation before he said anything else. This automatically would give his words more weight, more impact. It would help him appear wise with his every utterance being deliberate, considered. No one could ever accuse him of "just shooting off his mouth."

I hope I never "just shoot off my mouth" but know I do. I like to talk, and lose all track of my breathing when in a conversation. Sometimes I can tune in to it while listening and I think it helps me listen, understand, and tune in to the person I'm talking with much better. I totally try to avoid "talking to" people. I hope no one ever catches me simply "talking at" people. Other people often see big talkers as simply "talking at people

I hope to see agreements, disagreements etc. here.. Discussing the above could improve my thinking.